Zhephree

Important Information for Wooden Rows Users

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:54:00 -0600

Wooden Rows saw a really nice launch! In about 8 hours from the time it was launched, over 53,000 items were added to users’ libraries, averaging about 547 items per user. This is a great response!

However, I may have jumped the gun and launched a day early.

Apparently, Amazon’s Terms of Service for their API state that their API cannot be used with applications intended to be used on mobile or handheld devices. That means Wooden Rows.

This means that I must abandon Amazon as my data provider as soon as possible. This sucks a lot as Amazon provided the best user experience. So, what are the alternatives?

Surprisingly, eBay has a nice and less restrictive API for getting product information. Unfortunately, it has less data about each item. As Amazon gives you track listings and aspect ratios for your items, eBay does not (well, not consistently). However, it’s the best, most legal method for obtaining data.

I did some thinking and honestly, the main thing you want in your library are the titles, the format, the image, year, and the creator (artist, author, etc). This is the most important info. And eBay gives me this much.

What I’m in the process of doing is moving the app over to using eBay instead of Amazon for data. However, what I’m doing is, the app will query my server first. My server will then search the libraries of every existing Wooden Rows user and see if they have the item. If so, we’ll reference that data and save an API call to eBay. If there are no results for that item in the Wooden Rows database, we’ll then query eBay and return results from there.

The cool thing is, all of that is handled on the Wooden Rows server. This means that, in the future, I can change the data provider, add more data providers, etc. and you guys will never know the difference. It won’t take me issuing an app update. And, as Wooden Rows is poised to go cross-platform, this is a big deal.

There is one downside for you early adopters — once I make the change to support eBay, you’ll have to run a little migration tool built into the next version of the app to convert your Amazon data to eBay data.

In addition, because eBay may not have the item you want, I will be adding in the ability to manually add items, including uploading a photo for it, and the ability to edit items in your library. This well help alleviate any weird info eBay gives you, or if the photo sucks, or the meta data is incomplete.

I’m doing everything I can to make this as painless as possible.

So, keep a watch here and on my Twitter to find out more info. I need to get this done ASAP, so, hopefully Thursday or Friday I’ll have this completed.

I thank you for buying Wooden Rows and thank you for understanding. The alternative is to pull the app and give up, but screw that!

Ladies and Gentlemen -- I give you my first webservice

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:42:52 -0600

Ladies and Gentlemen -- I give you my first webservice:

Wooden Rows has been released on the webOS TouchPad, with an Android and iOS version coming this month.

Another Contribution to the Open Source Community: neato!

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:59:06 -0600

I’ve always been a big fan of open source. It’s how I’ve learned how to do most of what I do. I’m also a fan of getting some income from my app sales. I’ve struggled to find a balance between the two.

While I know open sourcing doesn’t always negatively affect profits of an app, I’m not sure I want to risk it.

So, I’m not positive if apps like incredible! or Wooden Rows will ever be fully open source, but I will open source older apps. I will also continue to post Gists of code on GitHub for components and CSS and functions I think could be useful to others.

My first mobile app (foursquare) has always been open source and my Untappd webOS client growlr has been too. So, to add to that, I’ve opened the source for neato! today.

You can find all of my open source projects on GitHub (foursquare is under their account).

I will also make the commitment right now that neato! will always be open source, so when I port neato! to Enyo for cross-platform development, it’ll still be opened. It’ll still be for sale in the various app stores, but it’ll be open as well.

I like the idea of opening up Wooden Rows, but there are lots of server-side aspects of the app that I’m not sure I want to open up, especially since I don’t want my server to get hammered or compromised. I am willing to work with members of the Open Source community to discuss the feasibility of this. Not that it means I”ll definitely do it, but I’d like to hear some ideas before I decide not to.

Arrrr! Me Opinions on App Piracy

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:46:00 -0600

A lot of talk about piracy in the webOS world has been taking place and I felt like commenting on it here.

First, let’s get this out of the way: piracy, by definition, is theft and theft is illegal. Piracy is in fact illegal, according to pretty much every country. This isn’t an opinion; it’s a fact.

The controversy over piracy isn’t whether it’s illegal or not; it’s over whether it’s moral or not. Before we can dive into that, we should cover some other points.

Effect on Developers
Piracy does affect the developers directly, especially smaller, indie developers like myself. Luckily for me, my apps are a side-job and not my main source of income. A little hit to my bottom line on app sales doesn’t keep food off my table, nor does it mean the bank will take my house. But that’s my situation. A lot of people do depend on their app sales for a significant portion of their household income.

Simple math would dictate that piracy does take money from developers. Let’s say that 1,000 people have downloaded your app that is priced at $1. That would mean your app made you $1,000 (not taking the App Store/Catalog/Marketplace cuts). However, 30 of those 1,000 users actually pirated your app, which means you lost $30. On the first glance, $30 isn’t a whole lot of money and it’s not much to worry about.

But that’s assuming those 30 pirates are the only people that will steal your app. Chances are, a link to download the app is posted somewhere, which means that others will download your app for free until that link is no longer available. That $30 steadily increases, especially if you have a popular app, and if you charge more than $1 for your app (as you probably should be).

Why Do People Pirate Apps?
There are a lot of reasons people pirate apps. The first reason is usually “I don’t want to pay for something I can get for free.” And let’s be honest, most of us are like that. I don’t mean we all steal, but, given the choice between paying for something, or it being given to you for free, most of us would take it for free. This is the type of pirate that I honestly despise and don’t want. They’re under the impression that because they can’t afford to purchase something, they don’t have to pay for it. This is a terrible rationalization.

Taking something because you can’t/don’t want to pay for it is not a valid excuse. I’d love to get a new car right now. My Corolla is showing its age and could really be replaced. But, I can’t afford to buy a new car right now. Does that mean I can just go to the Toyota dealership and just take one? Absolutely not! If you can’t afford something, you have to go without it.

But, in terms of app theft, there are a couple of other reasons people steal. One is georestrictions. In my experience, a lot of people have pirated my apps because they can’t purchase them through the App Catalog in their country. I make my apps available in every country HP allows me too, but for various reasons, that isn’t every country in the world. As a result, these users can’t use my app. It’s not their fault. So, they find a place to download them and use them. To mean, that’s a testament to how good my apps are. The fact that someone who can’t legally buy my app will seek it out elsewhere means my app is worth it to them.

Another reason people pirate apps is to try them out before buying them. On most platforms, unless the developer offers a separate free/trial version of their app, there is no way to try an app without having to buy it and hope for the best. The Android Marketplace lets users “return” an app within 15 minutes of purchasing it. While this isn’t an ideal amount of time to try out an app, it’s a step in the right direction. I get it, though. You can rent a movie or stream it on Netflix if you don’t want to buy it just yet. You can watch a trailer of the movie before seeing it in theatres. You can listen to 30 second samples of each song on an album before purchasing it, or listen to the whole thing in some brick-and-mortar stores. Heck, most restaurants give you a sample of the wine you order before paying for the whole bottle. A lot of bars will give you a sample of a beer before you buy a whole pint. I get it. We live in a world where, generally speaking, you can try something before you buy it and the app world hasn’t fully caught up to that.

I’m not just a developer. I’m a user, too. I experience all of these things myself, just as you do. I hope and hope that an app (especially one that’s $2 or $3) is worth it. But, instead of just biting the bullet and purchasing the app, I research it. I read reviews in the Catalog. I look at the screen shots or video to see if it does what I expect it to do. I look up reviews of the apps on the various mobile blogs. I search the name of the app on YouTube to see if there are any videos showing how the app works. I research apps the same way I’d research a TV or anything else I was considering buying. I don’t just buy the first TV I see in Best Buy; I look online and ask friends and research the TV myself first. When I walk into the store, I know exactly what I want.

So, What’s Legit?
Well, not a whole lot. Saying you pirated an app because you didn’t want to pay for it or can’t afford to pay for it is the least-valid excuse of all. This is absolutely no different than walking into a store, taking something off the shelves, and walking out without paying for it.

Pirating something as a try-before-you-buy method isn’t as bad, provided you actually make a purchase for the app if you like it, or if you don’t, you purchase some other app that does what you want it to. This is very seldom the outcome of pirating, by the way. Researching something before buying it — whether it’s a house or a TV or an app — is ALWAYS a good idea.

Pirating because you legally cannot buy the app in your country is a grey area. It’s a part of piracy that I sort of turn my eye from. However, if this is the case, it is your duty to contact the developer of the app (any decent developer has contact info in the app or in the app description) and offer to PayPal them for the app. This is not so crazy, mind you. I have received close to 20 PayPal donations for various amounts from people that stole neato! because they could not download the app in their country. Some donated less than the price of the app ($0.50) and some donated more than the cost of the app ($5.00).

Unfortunately, the norm is that people pirate because they don’t want to or don’t have the money to spend on the app. This is not a justification for piracy. “I didn’t have enough money!” “I’m only a teenager without a credit card!” “I don’t have a job!” These are not valid excuses for piracy. And, if that’s the case, then I’d have to question how you got a cellphone and pay the bill each month. If you only have enough money to pay your phone bill each month, then that means you don’t get apps. Either get a less-expensive monthly plan so you can afford apps, or, only download apps that are intentionally free. Those are your choices. There is no “But…”.

And if you’re a kid and your parents bought your cellphone and pay for your plan, then, guess what — that doesn’t mean you can pirate. If you parents won’t pay for apps, then, buddy, you don’t get apps. It doesn’t mean you can steal them. If they wouldn’t buy you that cellphone, would have stolen that, too?

Furthermore…
There’s this idea in the piracy circles that because it’s so easy to pirate something, it’s okay to do it. Stealing software is very easy. You download the file just like any other file on the web, so it feels no different than legally downloading something. Contrast that with stealing something from a physical store — buying something from a store and stealing something from a store are VERY different actions. This is how people feel that it’s wrong.

Which brings me to my next point: pirates feel that because apps are digital goods, that is, intangible objects, that it’s not a big deal to steal them. In fact, I’ve read arguments that it isn’t stealing at all because you’re not physically taking anything. Some argue that because the copies are produced for nothing, it’s justifiable. They argue that physical goods cost money to make each unit. This is true. The cost to make a TV is the same every single time. It costs the same to make 1 TV as it does to make 1000 TVs (excluding discounted rates for buying parts in bulk). So, taking one TV means taking the cost of making that TV out of the company’s pocket.

But digital goods, you can copy a file a million times and there’s really zero overhead. Technically, as a developer, you only make one app and then you have infinity copies of your app to sell. So, technically, yes, it doesn’t cost the same money to make each copy of your app as it did to make the first one.

Plus, people argue that since all you had to do was type out some code for a few hours and didn’t actually use any materials to make an app that all of your app sales are profits. In some ways, this is true. I won’t deny that. And yes, I would own a computer whether I was a developer or not. So, that cost doesn’t really factor in.

But let’s factor in some other costs. The software I sue to develop my apps, Coda, is $100. I bought that. Also consider the amount of tablets and phones I’ve had to get as test devices. Buying a cellphone off-contract is not $99. It’s usually closer to $500. Now, obviously, these are generally one-time purchases. Unless the hardware company makes a vast change in their device (like, iPad 1 vs iPad 2). Then you have to buy it all over again to test for compatibility, or new features (like a camera or gyroscope or something). Also consider that most mobile platforms require their developers to pay a yearly fee to be a registered developer and have your app in the official Store. This is usually another $100.

What about the costs of running a server if your app uses cloud storage in some way, like all of my apps do? To handle thousands and thousands of simultaneous users on multiple platforms using multiple apps you need a beefy server with a lot of bandwidth. Hell, you might even need multiple servers.

But never mind the things you actually have to buy. What about the time spent developing the app? Researching and learning the device’s ins and outs. Researching and learning the APIs for developing the app on that platform. The time spent in Photoshop (another expensive software…) making graphics and UI components?

Just because, when it comes to apps, I work for myself doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get paid for my time. And even if you consider my development a service and not making a product, should people who provide a service be paid? What a maid services that clean your home or business? They don’t actually give you anything. They provide a service. The same with real estate agents. You pay them to help you pay someone else for a house. (Ok, you don’t always pay them directly, but they still get paid for their time.)

Yes, I develop apps because I can make money from them. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But that isn’t the only reason. I make apps because I see a void in the way people do things and I aim to fill that void by providing a product that they can use. I also have free apps that I made for that reason. I contribute code to open source. I help other developers and users on forums and Twitter and never expect any cash. Developers aren’t always doing everything for the money. We aren’t greedy (well, most of us. Like any group, there are always the ones that are in it for the wrong reasons and make the rest of us look bad.).

Do I care that people steal my apps? Absolutely. My apps are things I’m proud of. They’re things I’ve literally spend hundreds, if not, thousands of hours creating and marketing and supporting. If I charge for those apps, I expect to receive that money for them. There’s a reason apps are priced so low — we’re recouping the development costs a little on each app sale. A 99¢ app yields the developer a little under 70¢, after Apple or HP or whomever takes their 30% cut. That means, for a 99¢ app, we get 70¢. That’s not a lot. Sure, after several thousand downloads, that number increases, but it’s still not a lot, especially if that developer counts on app sales for a significant portion of their income.

I’ve seen comments along the lines of “It’s just a hobby you do on weekends.” As a customer, it’s not up to you to decide what is considered a hobby or a side job or to even worry how much time we spend making something. The point is that we’ve made something and if you want to use it, you’ll have to pay for it.

Sometimes I wish I could get the streaming AND disc movies from Netflix, but my budget only allows for the cheap streaming-only plan. Just because I want the discs and can’t afford it does not mean I can grab random red envelopes from my neighbors’ mail boxes. I’m sure if I just told the people at Netflix, the Post Office, and my neighbors that I really wanted the discs but can’t afford it, it’ll all be okay, right? I mean, surely Netflix has recouped the costs for that disc already? It’s not like they need my extra dollars each month to cover the cost, right?

But that’s life, man. If you want something that costs money and you don’t have that money or want to part with that money, then you can’t have it. It’s time to be damn adult and realize this.

Again, I get nervous buying apps, too. If it sucks, I’m out of that money. But, as a person who spent that money, that is a risk I’m taking. This isn’t a surprise. This isn’t some hidden fact about app stores. It is well-known that if you buy an app, you bought it for life. There’s no take-backs. No refunds. You know this going in, so, if you’re not willing to work under those rules, then you shouldn’t be using an app-capable device, or you should only use apps that are listed as free.

People say that piracy increases sales. In some media, that’s probably true, but that’s because alternate revenue streams exist. Some musicians say piracy has increased sales for them, which I definitely believe. But, that’s also because some people want to have the liner notes and other things that come with physical CDs. It’s because bands have T-shirts and stickers and concerts tickets to sell, where they actually make more money. It doesn’t work out for all musicians, but I can see how it helps those that it does.

Apps don’t really have those extra revenue streams though. If you steal an app, you have the entire app. There are no physical goodies that you’re missing out on. There are no public appearances that people pay for. There are no T-shirts or bumper stickers to buy (well, most of the time). So, the idea that piracy boosts app sales is really, quite frankly, bullshit.

Will I go after people that steal my apps? Nah, probably not. For me, personally, it’s not worth my time. And, in the end, it’s not in their best interest. They won’t know when newer versions are released. They won’t be guaranteed a fully functioning app. They won’t be guaranteed a safe app that someone hasn’t tampered with to mess up their phone or steal their data. There’s a greater risk to being a pirate, so, I feel they’ll get theirs in the end.

I commend others fighting piracy on the various platforms and I hope they’re successful. What’s happening is illegal and wrong, so, it should definitely be stopped.

St. Baldrick's

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:13:09 -0600

St. Baldrick's:

Hey guys! If you’re not familiar with St. Baldrick’s, it’s the cool organization that gets people to shave their heads in solidarity with kids undergoing cancer treatment. By promising to shave my head at the local event here in New Orleans, I’m asking friends and family to make a donation on my behalf.

100% of the donations go to cancer research grants.

So, if you can spare a few dollars, I’d be really grateful!

Wooden Rows webOS Release and an incredible! Price Drop

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:34:59 -0600

It finally happened. I’ve finally submitted Wooden Rows to HP. Hopefully it’s reviewed and approved quickly.

In case you don’t know, Wooden Rows is a visual database of your books, music, movies, and video games. You can sort and search your library almost any way you’d want to. Want to watch a movie? Scroll through your movies in Wooden Rows instead of standing in front of your DVD rack forever. Can’t remember which books you own from a series? Pull it up on Wooden Rows.

In addition to just keeping track of your stuff in your house, Wooden Rows can also let you mark whether you lent an item out to a friend and to whom. So, if Bill still has your “LOST” season 6 DVDs, you’ll know right away.

Even better is that all of your data is synced “in the cloud” so if your device gets lost or broken, or if you use Wooden Rows on multiple devices, simply logging in will pull in all of your content. What’s more is, since it’s all on the web anyway, you can view your library from the Wooden Rows website on any device with a web browser. Perfect for those times you’re in the store and can’t remember if you have the director’s cut with actor commentary, or the special edition with the blooper reel.

And, of course, Wooden Rows lets you share any item in your library on Facebook or Twitter. Your friends will get to see your library items like this. And, if you turn the feature on, it’ll share each item you add to your library via Facebook’s Open Graph, which means your items will show up in the Activity Stream on Facebook.

Wooden Rows uses Amazon to find and add your items. The app is smart enough to know whether you use Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or any other localized Amazon site so you always get the appropriate content.

Wooden Rows is currently only available for the HP TouchPad running webOS. It will very soon be available on webOS smartphones (with Enyo), iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads), and Android devices (phones and tablets). Shortly thereafter we’ll see a Windows Phone 7 release as well.

Once it is approved by HP, you’ll be able to download it in the App Catalog for $3.99.

BONUS! As a celebration of the launch of Wooden Rows, I have permanently lowered the price of incredible! from $4.99 to $3.99. If you don’t already have it, grab it from the App Catalog!

Reflecting on Making the Dumb/Smart Decision to Become a webOS Developer

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:42:05 -0600

So, some time has passed since the open-sourcing of the Enyo framework and I’ve had some time to put aside my “Oh my god! Oh my god!” excitement and start formulating a plan and to reflect on what being a webOS developer has afforded me.

Let’s Take a Step Back
Mid-2009, Palm shows off the first webOS device, the Palm Pre, at CES. I happen to be in the market for a new smartphone.

Actually, let’s take a few more steps back.

I’m a problem solver when it comes to the way I use computers. I’ve been a developer in some capacity since the second grade (built a Tic-Tac-Toe game in BASIC). Once I discovered Visual Basic 6 (using a “borrowed” copy from my uncle), I discovered that any time a program frustrated me, I’d just make my own that didn’t. Hated the calendar application in Windows 95, so I wrote my own to pop-up reminders for important events, like birthdays. The idea that I could fix something by creating something new excited me.

It was around that time that I got into web development. My first major web project was in high school where I built an online community around (yes, I know…) “new metal”. Yep, a community for Korn and System of a Down and Coal Chamber fans to post lyrics, photos, music videos, etc. It got pretty large. All of it was static pages. I’d take e-mail submissions and manually update the HTML files. A few things were done by copy-pasted widgets, but it was mostly static.

As I got older, I got into ASP, and later PHP, where I started to make websites for friends and family. I’d eventually start my own side business developing websites professionally, once my design and user experience skills increased. By 2009, I had been a professional web developer for about 10 years, both as a freelancer and for my day-job.

Now that you have my background, we can jump back to 2009.

So as I saw and read about webOS I instantly knew it was for me. Why? Because I could develop my own apps for my phone! I had never considered becoming an app developer by any means. I wanted to write apps for my old Windows Mobile 6 device, but frankly, I didn’t want to learn something new.

webOS opened a door for me to make my life easier, not only because the OS was, as I saw it, ahead of its time, but because I could make little apps that did things for me when I found things I didn’t like in existing apps.

And so I began writing the foursquare app for webOS. I wanted foursquare, but webOS users were out of luck. SMS was a terrible way to check in, and the mobile website required you to search for the venue, which wasn’t very helpful or speedy. So, I started writing the app, got some big help from a couple of other guys (Chris van Buskirk!) and the foursquare team (Naveen has had a huge hand in my success as a mobile developer as a result), and people liked what they saw. I made it prettier, made it more like the Android and iPhone experiences, and I got the confidence I needed to build more apps.

It’s important to note that I never intended my foursquare app to be used by anyone but myself. It was, in my eyes, a stop-gap until foursquare eventually developed one in-house. Unfortunately, partly because of my diligence and partly because of webOS’s lack of market-share, that never happened. So, as a result, I kept building to make the app what it is today.

The same thing happened when Google built Chrome-to-Phone for Android, an app that allowed you to send URLs from your web browser to your Android phone. I loved this idea and wanted, so I set out to build a little utility for webOS that did basically the same thing. Again, I was aiming to just make something for myself. But, people wanted the tool themselves and so I expanded its capabilities, made it prettier, and neato! was born.

Not much later, I did the same thing, only because Untappd’s mobile web interface couldn’t get GPS coordinates in the webOS browser, webOS users couldn’t add their location to their beer check-ins. So, to work around that, I built growlr, a little app to let you check-in to Untappd and attach your foursquare location to your check-in. I actually got the very first API Key for Untappd’s API to develop this app. Greg Avola, the CTO, had to add me into the database manually!

These three apps and the support from the webOS community made me realize that I was, sort of by chance, a mobile app developer.

Coming to Terms
Once I realized I was mobile developer, I needed new ideas. I also needed to make some decisions.

I had come up with my latest idea — incredible!, a sort of aggregator for a user’s social media accounts — and I absolutely wanted it to be a webOS app. At this point, my then-girlfriend-now-wife Rhea was a Pixi user, I was a Pre user, and the murmurs of what webOS was going to be were loud. HP had purchased Palm and all we heard about was what great things were going to happen with this revolutionary mobile OS.

So, because of all of that, I put all of my eggs into the webOS basket and started development for incredible!. This felt like a good idea. Sure, webOS was barely fighting for 3rd place in the mobile market, but everything felt like it was going to advance. It felt like my choice was a smart one. As an indie developer, making the leap to crossplatform is expensive, what with developer program fees (about $100 on most platforms) and the cost of buying devices for each platform (and, in most cases, phone and tablet devices for each platform). It didn’t make financial sense for me to go cross platform at the moment.

So I stuck with webOS. And, despite HP killing off webOS hardware, despite webOS never reaching 3rd place in market or mind share, despite people laughing any time I said “webOS”, despite the quick buck being an iPhone developer made you at the time, this was the best decision I ever made.

I’m Ahead of the Game
You see, because I wrote my apps as webOS apps first, I probably missed out on some cash. That sucks. But, because the webOS community is so good and strong and supportive, and because the webOS Developer Relations group is so good and strong and supportive, I was somewhat successful. I have some dough in my PayPal account. Not much, but it’s there.

But, because I chose webOS as my target platform, I’m ready for what 2012 webOS will bring. With the open-sourcing of Enyo, I can easily port my apps to iOS and Android using the same code base.

You see, I, today, right now, have a working version of my next app, Wooden Rows, running beautifully on webOS on my TouchPad. Taking that same code, I built a PhoneGap application and have that same app running beautifully on an iPad. And, because of the open source nature of webOS, the Android community has managed to get Android running on the TouchPad, which means, for free, I have an Android tablet to test on. Which also means, in addition to my same code running on webOS and iOS, I also have it running on Android.

That’s such an amazing thing to me, I want to state it again:

I have the exact same code for my webOS app running on iOS and Android.

Is it perfect? Nah, I have to make a few tweaks here and there, but the point is, it’s there and it works, and it’s worth charging money for in the App Store and the Android Marketplace.

And what’s awesome further is that because of webOS and Enyo’s web-based technologies, making my apps scale down to phone-sized screens is pretty much a matter of making some changes to my CSS for the app to work on smaller screens. I’m about 60% done getting my webOS tablet app working at phone resolutions on 3 platforms.

This means that Wooden Rows will be available on:

HP TouchPad
Palm Pre (all)
Palm Pixi (all)
HP Veer
iPad (all)
iPhone (all)
Android phones (as many as possible!)
Samsung Galaxy Tab
Amazon Kindle Fire
Other Android tablets

And that’s just the beginning.

So, again, being a webOS developer means that I have a cross-platform app almost ready for the masses, and I have a free webOS and Android tablet device. All because I made a seemingly silly decision to stick with webOS.

Looking Into the Future
Since I’m well-versed in the ways of Enyo, I am head of the game even into the future. Once Enyo 2.0 is fully baked, I’ll start developing all of my new apps using it and targeting webOS, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7.

I can build apps for pretty much any platform using everything I know right now, without having to learn a new language. I can sell my apps 3 to 4 times over.

I can, for real now, feel like a mobile developer.

And I owe every bit of it to choosing that Palm Pre back in 2009 and never looking back. Thanks, webOS community. Thanks, webOS Developer Relations team.

Enyo Goes Open Source: Now What?

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:43:00 -0600

I’m pretty excited about the open-sourcing of the Enyo framework. This means big things for me as a developer, so I thought I’d comment on what my plans are.

Finish Developing Wooden Rows. This should happen this week, with a submission to the webOS App Catalog this weekend. (Hopefully!) The app, as promised, will be available on webOS first. It is TouchPad-only at the moment, but I hope to change that.
Make Sure Wooden Rows is Resolution-Agnostic. While it’s best a tablet app, I want to work on making it work at smaller screen sizes so it’ll be phone-friendly, too.
Port Wooden Rows to iOS and Android. Thanks to PhoneGap, this should be relatively easy. I’ll push to these two platforms as quickly as possible. Assuming the app scales down to phone screens well, it’ll be on phones and tablets with these OSes.
Port incredible! to iOS and Android. I’m targeting these platforms first since they’re the big ones. I’m aiming for tablets only on this one.
Begin Developing New App. I have plans for a new app. I’ll give more details as I get closer to starting on it.
Rebuild neato! in Enyo. By this point, Enyo 2.0 will be fully released and I’ll be able to bring neato! to webOS, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, allowing you to send stuff from your Pre to your iPad or your iPhone to your Kindle Fire or any other crazy combination.

So, there you have it: a rough outline of my development plans. I’m targeting iOS and Android first with the ports, but will work on Windows Phone after that. I also haven’t ruled out a web app for users that currently use the app on some other devices.

And, because of the new Zhephree Accounts, your settings and data will be available across all devices automatically. Have the app on your TouchPad? Sign in on your iPad and boom! it’s all there.

Tips on Contacting Your Congresspeople About SOPA

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:40:49 -0600

Obviously, you’ve heard about SOPA and PIPA, the bills that will give the government unfettered authority over the Internet. I won’t go into details here as others have done it far better. But it’s important for you to take action and let your Representatives and Senators know how you feel. They take an oath to vote as their constituents want them to vote. Yes, there’s nothing that says they have to and if they’re not up for re-election, they probably don’t care, but many Representatives and reversed their opinions and support because of citizen outcry.

So, to help you help us, here’s where you can find your representatives and senators to contact them.

Go to Wikipedia
When the blackout loads, enter in your ZIP code
Click the “Contact Form” link under one of your Congresspeople.
Fill out the form on their website and ask them to vote against SOPA.
Repeat this for all of your Congresspeople.

If you need help on what to say, here’s the message I’ve been sending out:

[NAME OF REP] —

As you are aware, the SOPA bill is about to be voted upon. As your constituent, I plead with you to do what you can to stop this disaster of a bill.

The internet is a font of knowledge and a communication platform like no other. It enables us to communicate with loved ones across the globe. It helps our troops over seas see their families while they defend our freedoms. It helps students learn and access information in ways and speeds never before possible.

As with all types of theft, there obviously must be something done about rampant piracy and copyright infringement on the Internet — this much is true. However, the carte blanche authority SOPA would give the US government is appalling, and frankly, scary.

The United States has prided itself as a place of freedom where one can go to escape oppression and inequalities from other nations — the very reason our great country exists at all. If SOPA passes, the US will be employing an overly restrictive Internet identical to those in place in China, Syria, and Iran — countries we’ve been trying to get to change their ways. It feels like a step backward to pass SOPA.

Passing SOPA does nothing to curb piracy. It does not go after those that infringe copyrights. Under SOPA, a news organization’s website could be shut down if an anonymous commenter leaves a comment with a link to a site with infringing material. This would be akin to a vandal spray painting the wall of a building and the owner of that building being arrested instead of the vandal.

In order to become a thriving, modern society, we need unfiltered access to the web and to do so, we can’t let SOPA pass. We need a better, more informed game plan.

Thank you.

The key is to explain why SOPA and PIPA are bad, but also why they should care. As you can see, I appealed to their patriotism and troop support. This shows them that this is an un-American bill and that it affects all of is. Likening the bill to “enemy” countries is also helpful. While these are tactics, they are 100% true and accurate.

Please educate yourself on the issue and please pass some links to your friends on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and wherever to educate them. E-mail your parents and explain it to them.

http://blacklists.eff.org/

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22/2648219/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa-what-is-it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act (Yes, it still loads)

http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-dark-ages/

While we as US citizens don’t have a very loud voice, we do still have a voice and it’s time for us to use it.

24 Hours on Android as a webOS Guy

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:56:03 -0600

I’ll preface this post with some back story. When I first got a cellphone in like 2001, I was a Verizon customer. My first for-real job found me becoming their Director of Technology right after I graduated high school and they offered to pay for my cellphone, but it required me to switch to their plan, on Sprint. So I did and got a nice little LG camera phone. A few years later, I left the company but remained on Sprint. I picked up an HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6.1 as my first smartphone.

After a while, that Mogul started to wear thin and, seemingly just in time, Palm announced the original Pre. And lucky me was on Sprint. It seemed different and new and hey! apps are made in web technologies, the very thing I’ve done for a living for at least 10 years of my life. So I bought the Pre at full retail (with a portion of the cost subsidized by my current employer). I instantly loved it.

From there, you guys know the story: I was frustrated at the lack of a webOS foursquare app, so I built one with some help from newly-found Internet-friend Chris van Buskirk. Then I got heavy into development, became a part of the community, incited a few Twitter riots with comments on webOS and HP, made a few dollars, and made a bunch more Internet-friends, many of whom I hung out with and drank with in New York. webOS is and will be for a long time, in my opinion, the best and most intuitive and beautiful mobile OS available.

However, my Sprint contract ran out in August, freeing me from their clutches. As you also know, I recently got married and when you get married, you start consolidating stuff to save hassles and money. In the New Orleans area, Verizon’s network quality outshines Sprint’s with no contest and Rhea has been a Verizon customer for years. It made better sense to move her to a family plan and add me as a second line. And so that was the plan — port my Sprint number to Verizon. (Monthly, we’ll actually save about $40 by being on one Verizon family plan vs. one Verizon single line plan and one Sprint single line plan).

At this point, I had a choice to make: take the Verizon Pre 3 I had for development purposes over to Verizon, or, try something new. It was a tough decision to make, but, as a developer, it makes more sense for me to diversify my familiarity with mobile OSes, so I decided to go with Android since it’s a market leader right now. That decision was finalized with the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus.

So, I got my GNexus in a day early on Monday and got it activated Tuesday morning. I’ve been playing with and using it pretty straight through all that time and I felt I should comment on Android as a webOS guy.

Since webOS has its awesome Synergy, setting up my GNexus was a breeze. I logged into my Google account and all my contacts were there. My calendar events were there. My email showed up. And after adding my work’s Exchange account and downloading the Facebook app, my contacts and calendars mirrored exactly what I had on webOS.

The UI is really slick-looking. It’s fluid and really intuitive. The ever-present Google search bar on your Home Screen is reminiscent of the JustType bar in webOS 2.0/3.0. Tapping it allows you to search the web and your phone for apps and contacts and email. It doesn’t have the fancy actions like JustType (like sending a tweet from the search), but I didn’t use that very often anyway so for me, it’s not a big loss. Plus, since you can add widgets to your homescreen, finding a widget to do those things is pretty trivial.

Multitasking isn’t AS good as webOS, but on Ice Cream Sandwich, the experience is similar. While the apps aren’t running live like in webOS, switching between them is very webOS-like (which makes sense, considering the same guy designed both). Whereas in webOS you have a horizontally-scrolling list of thumbnails of your open apps and you swipe them up to close them, ICS has a vertically-scrolling list of thumbnails (and text) of your open apps and you swipe them to the side to close them. While different, it was intuitive enough to figure out, especially coming from webOS.

The buttons at the bottom of the Galaxy Nexus aren’t really buttons at all. They’re soft buttons, that is, the buttons are digital buttons created by the OS at the very bottom of the screen. I like this a lot. For one, you only get the buttons you need, when you need them. For instance, the menu button. It only appears in apps that have menus. And when you rotate the phone, the buttons rotate as well.

This virtual button area makes for an unintended feature — the back button is on the far left of the bottom button area. As a webOS user, when I want to go back, I Instinctively swipe to the left of the bottom area of the screen. I can actually do this on the Galaxy Nexus, as long as I lift up my thumb when it’s over the Back button. While not an intended feature, it will help me with the transition.

I’m used to looking at the bottom of the screen for notifications in webOS, so I often think I have none since they’re at the top in Android. That’ll correct itself over time. Swiping down on the top of the screen reveals all of your notifications, similar to how tapping the notification area in webOS expanded all the notifications. And, just like in webOS, you can swipe the notifications to the side to remove them. There’s also an X button at the top to clear all of the notifications, which is a welcomed feature.

I’m getting used to the virtual keyboard and while it’s waaay different than a hardware keyboard, I like it. I type horribly on it, but I type horribly on the Pre2’s keyboard and even fullsize keyboards on computers. The difference is the autocorrect in Android is really pretty good, so no one knows how terribly I type.

The size of the phone is WAY bigger than my Pre2. Surprisingly, the Galaxy Nexus is pretty light. I honestly think the Pre2 weighs more, and that’d make sense due to the sliding mechanism and keyboard. So, the phone fits perfectly in my hand and in my pocket and weighs a bit less. I’m fine with that. The screen is HUGE, and while I’d be fine with a smaller 4.3” screen, I’m also fine with the Galaxy Nexus’s 4.65” screen. The guy at the Verizon store by my house compared it to his Droid RAZR and it’s just about the same size — even in thickness. (The GNexus is obviously thicker, but it’s only by millimeters and we all know the Metric system doesn’t count). Compared to an iPhone, it’s bigger, but it’s so negligible that I think all of the people complaining about the size are complaining just to complain.

The phone is super duper fast. Way faster than my Pre2. No sluggishness.

Battery life isn’t at all what people said it’d be, and that’s a good thing. I charged my phone to 100% around 9am yesterday morning. I didn’t get a warning about the battery being low (at 14%) until about midnight, and that’s after spending almost the whole day setting up the phone, playing around with it, and downloading and installing a couple dozen apps. I also have push notifications for like a billion apps. Now, to be fair, while I was at work, I turned off 4G to conserve power, but when it’s just sitting on my desk at the office, there’s no reason for it to be on LTE.

I think one of my favorite things though is the apps. Every time I think “Ooh! I wonder if there’s an app for this!” and I search the Marketplace for it, it exists. I have apps for PayPal, Chase, and ING Direct, which allows me to handle all of my money from my phone, which is a huge win for me. I could go on with examples, but that’s what excited me the most.

It is really weird not using my own apps on a day-to-day basis. The Android foursquare app is nice and well-made, but there are some subtleties I miss, like how the Android app opens up to your friends’ check-ins instead of nearby places like the webOS app. To me, using foursquare is for checking-in first, so I’d rather that be the first screen, but, that’s minor. Plus, since it’s an official app, I have access to all of the features, like Events, which they can’t open up entirely to third party developers due to data sharing agreements with their partners.

Chrome-to-Phone is nice and it does what it needs to and does it well, but it’s no neato!. Luckily, that won’t be forever because I plan on making neato! the first app I take to other platforms.

The official Untappd app is obviously more robust than my growlr app, but that’s expected since I never intended to make growlr a full Untappd app. Plus, Untappd hasn’t opened up photo uploads to third parties yet, so the official app is the only way to do that.

Installing apps from non-official Marketplace sources is pretty straightforward — download the APK (after enabling the ability to install from unofficial sources, a simple checkbox in your system settings) and open it and it’ll install — usually. Some APKs don’t install so easily and to do that, you have to download a (free) app call APK Installer from the official Marketplace to install those APKs. Since the app’s free and super small (like under a meg), it wasn’t a huge deal. I’ve been able to install a beta version of both Dropbox and Untappd by downloading APK files from two different web sites without ever connecting my phone to a computer, so, that experience doesn’t differ from webOS too much.

All in all, I’m really happy with my switch to Android and Verizon (except for Verizon’s data and LTE outage this morning…). It’s not webOS, which sucks, but it’s a great OS for how I use my phone. It’ll be fun getting into Android development and being able to bring my apps to even more users.

And, as I’ve said before, I’m still a webOS developer and I still have my TouchPad, so I’m still a webOS user, too. I’m still going to push apps out onto webOS (sometimes first!), so don’t worry. I just needed a new phone and I figured I’d try something new. I’m a gadget guy first and I love playing with new gadgets.

Important Notice About Zhephree Availability and Support (again)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:18:09 -0600

So, if you recall, a little over a month ago, @zeldamac and I got married. Around that time I made a similar post about how I wouldn’t be available.

That time is coming up again! We’ll be on our honeymoon/holiday break at the end of the year, so I will not be able to offer support for my apps during this time.

I will be unavailable from December 22 until January 3.

If you have any problems with any of my apps, you can still email me or tweet me with your issues, but I will not be responding to them until after the 3rd of January.

Thanks! And enjoy your appropriate winter time holidays!

littlebigdetails: Facebook - When you try to post your password...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:19:52 -0600

littlebigdetails:

Facebook - When you try to post your password on Facebook it turns into asterisks.

/via jan

Apparently, they have never seen this bash quote: http://bash.org/?244321

Hey, LittleBigDetails — you guys should verify things before you post them.

I Work For The Internet

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:27:35 -0600

I Work For The Internet:

staff:

We work for the Internet. And we’re guessing many of you do too. Whether it’s researching, selling, coding, supporting, designing — so many of our careers depend on the Internet.

One argument that’s been made to Congress is that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is needed to protect American jobs. In truth, the new liabilities this bill would impose on startups could stop American innovation in its tracks.

To make this clear to Congress, we’ve built IWorkForTheInternet.org to show the world how many of our careers depend on the Internet.

If you work for the Internet, please add yourself and spread the word.

A Solution to the Social Web Gender Problem

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:07:21 -0600

Pretty much everything we do on the web these days requires some sort of account or profile. We gladly (or sometimes, begrudgingly) fill them out. We enter our name, location, maybe a birthday, our gender, and hit “submit” and move on with our day.

But for many people, that little “gender” field sometimes is source of hesitation. Generally, a site will offer two choices: “male” or “female”. Some add the option of not specifying. Some include “other”. But, if I were one who did not identify with “male” or “female”, would I really want to be lumped into “other”? I wouldn’t.

The topic of gender on web sites has come up on many sites and many have blogged at length about the topic. The folks at AllOut.org have a campaign to get Facebook to add more options than the two standard ones.

People have come up with various ways to combat the problem. Google+ keeps your gender visible only to yourself, and, presumably Google’s demographic statistics. Supposed Facebook-killer Diaspora has gender as a freeform textfield, allowing you to enter in anything you want for your gender. MetaFilter has done this for a long time. In fact, someone over there compiled a list of everything people have typed in as their gender, and the frequency in which users do it. There’s a great discussion on the topic over there, too.

With the upcoming Zhephree Accounts for (almost) all of my apps, I knew I’d hit this problem with gender. Obviously, knowing someone’s gender when they keep track of the movies they own isn’t really necessary or useful. I also have no desire in running any stats on what gender has more books than movies. So, I decided to make gender optional. In fact, during the signup process, you’re only asked for a username, password, and email address.

Screenshot of the Zhephree Account signup page. No gender!

This is all well and fine, however, when a user shares an item in their Wooden Rows library out to their social networks, the landing page gives a little blurb about the user.

Screenshot of the Wooden Rows item share landing page.

It says “Geoff is using Wooden Rows to catalog their real world…” Anyone that paid attention in high school English class will know that “their” is a plural-possessive pronoun, that is, referring to more than one person. Some newer English teachers will reference the “singular, gender-neutral ‘they’”, but in reality, English doesn’t have a gender-neutral pronoun of any kind. Sure, it’s accepted by most English speakers, but it weirds me out when I read it.

So, then I thought “Guess I have to ask for gender…”, which brought me back to the whole gender identity issue. While it doesn’t affect me, I like to make things work for everyone, not just some people.

So I thought about the reason I needed gender and the answer was simple: knowing which pronoun to use. That made me realize that if what I really wanted to know about the suer was which pronouns to use, that’s what I should be asking, instead of inferring from their gender selection.

As a result, after one signs up for a Zhephree Account, they’ll be able to modify their profile, which contains the original username, password, and email fields, but also adds other fields (like location, etc).

And, it asks which pronouns the user would like to use, with freeform text fields.

Screenshot of the Edit Profile page for Zhephree Accounts

Obviously, while this approach asks the real questions so I get the real answers, it is three fields instead of one and assumes the user knows what these parts of speech are. To make it a little easier, the text field is located in its proper place in a sample sentence to give context. The text fields’ placeholder text shows some typical English pronouns as examples. And, to personalize it, the “Username” portion of the sample sentences changes as you type in a username.

Screenshot of Edit Profile page while a username is entered.

Another obvious flaw is, of course, misuse. I trust my users, and I feel that because its kind of a fun feature, people will respect it. I’m all for users using funny words, or just entering their username (“bob307 is sharing bob307’s library.”). I’m going to apply a swear filter though as the apps are all-ages. There will also be a 5 character limit.

But, all in all, I think it’s a novel approach to an issue that many feel dear to them. If I can help solve it, then so be it. I’ll see how this goes after the accounts go live and people start using them. It’ll be interesting to see the results of what users enter. By default, if the user leaves a field blank, it’ll use “their/them/they”.

Some Answers to Some Wooden Rows and Zhephree Account Questions

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:58:47 -0600

I’ve had a few questions asked about Wooden Rows and the new Zhephree Accounts, so I thought I’d address them in one place.

Are Zhephree Accounts free?
Yep! Always will be. The apps that’ll use Zhephree Accounts will be paid apps in the various app stores/markets/catalogs/etc, so that’s where support for the services will come from. That way you only pay a low fee once (to buy the app) and you get an account for free. Cool, eh?

What other platforms are you planning on developing for?
I have no hard plans at the moment, but Android and iOS are high probabilities, mostly because of their marketshare. Windows Phone is also a high possibility. Availability of specific apps on specific platforms will depend on the app and the platform. For instance, there are already official foursquare apps on all of those OSes, so I obviously won’t be porting my foursquare app to any others.

Will we be able to import/export our Wooden Rows libraries?
Specifics on this aren’t available yet because I haven’t explored all the possibilities. I do plan to allow you to import CSV files of your library from applications like Delicious Library. I also plan to let you import a “shelf” you’ve created on GoodReads into your library (if you’ve got a “shelf” of books you own).

Other expressed interest in being able to export the WR library, especially with the uncertainty of webOS. Since a Zhephree Account will automatically sync your device’s WR library to the Zhephree server, all of your data will be safe and sound on the web, still accessible through the WR website. I’ll most likely do a simple CSV file export from the website in case you’d like to import it elsewhere, or just use Excel or something.

What about a companion app on a phone to scan barcodes into the app?
That’s a great idea! It’s been suggested by a few people. On webOS, utilizing Touch-to-Share on the Pre3 and TouchPad would be an obvious choice, though there’s always the neato! technology to have it beam instantly to the Wooden Rows. I’ve already developed a barcode decoder in JavaScript, so the hard work’s done. I’ll look into this after WR launches.

What about cataloging other things, like beer and wine in your home cellar?
This is a cool idea! I’m currently using Amazon’s product API for the media items. Anyone have any good beer/wine databases? Untappd seems like a good option for beer. I’ll think about this for a post-1.0 set of features.

Thanks for sticking with webOS!
Hey, I always said: as long as I’m a webOS user and there are other webOS users, I’ll support the platform. That said, this will probably be the last app of mine that is initially a webOS exclusive. I’ll probably simultaneously launch future apps on more than one platform at a time. Sadly, regardless of the webOS future, this seems like the best options for me as a developer right now.

Introducing Wooden Rows

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:13:59 -0600

So, after about a two-week long contest to see who could guess what my new app would be based off a few hints I dropped on Twitter, Rod Whitby, Mr. @webosinternals himself, correctly guessed it. While his guess wasn’t 100% correct, it described two core features of the app, neither of which could exist without the root of the app. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce Wooden Rows!

What is it?
Wooden Rows allows you to catalog and keep track of the things you own in the real world: CDs, video games, movies, and books. You can sort and search for things in your library, You can “lend” an item to a friend (anyone in your contacts, so even Facebook friends if you have your account added to Synergy) to keep track of who has your stuff (that’s why the Harry Potter soundtrack is translucent).

You’ll also be able to share individual items via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. The link it sends out is a landing page much like that of Instagram or something in that it shows a picture of the item and some information about it and the user that shared it.

That’s the short version of it, but it goes a bit deeper and is the first app that opens up the Zhephree ecosystem.

Zhephree Ecosystem?
As I begin developing more and more apps on multiple platforms it’s becoming increasingly important that I allow people to keep track of their stuff. So, with Wooden Rows, I’ll also be introducing Zhephree Accounts. You’ll have the option of using a Zhephree Account with WR or not, but if you do, you get a lot of benefits:

Your entire library will be backed-up in the cloud
You’ll be able to view your library from a mobile-friendly website (Perfect for when you’re at the store and can’t remember which special edition DVD you have or what season of a TV show you last bought)

OK, so 2, but those are big. Plus, more of my apps will move to this model, allowing one username/password for keeping track of your stuff. For instance, eventually, incredible! will back-up your Rules, Groups, and even your social media accounts so that it’ll stay synced across multiple devices. Another future upgrade is neato! will be going cross-platform (hooray!) and a Zhephree Account will allow you to log in on one device, authorize it, and do the same on your computer or another device and instantly see all your devices you can send to. No more adding your TouchPad as a “friend” on your Pre!

There will be a main account login area on zhephree.com where you’ll be able to manage all of your app data AND be able to remotely revoke any app’s ability to connect to your account — perfect for if you lose your device.

This is a lot of big news and I can’t wait to have it all done and available for everyone! I don’t have a release date or beta period decided upon for WR, but the app itself is about 95% done. Most of the work is server-side.

Wooden Rows will be a TouchPad exclusive at first, but will most likely be ported to other devices in the near future.

So, there you have it. More screen shots? Sure!

Video Game Detail

Music CD Detail

Detail of a Music CD that is currently lent out to a friend.

Multiple ways to add an item (No, the camera on the TouchPad isn’t good enough to read barcodes. They must be typed in.)

Dialog of Search Results

For My Next Trick... (New App and a Contest!)

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:18:00 -0600

I’m still here and I’m still developing for webOS! My next app will possibly be my last webOS-exclusive app. That doesn’t mean I will stop developing for webOS. It just means that my apps will likely be cross-platform from here on out. I may even move some apps to other platforms…

I’ve been teasing my new app on Twitter lately; trickling out some hints here and there. I haven’t announced functionality or a name… yet.

Here are the hints so far:

It is a slight departure from my usual apps
It allows you to share things within the app via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (Whaaa?!) but isn’t centered around these social networks
A flower is involved. Sort of.
The name is not all lowercase, nor does it contain an exclamation point
I had to make my own API running on my own server
It ties into your Contacts for one feature
It’ll backup/sync stuff in the app to my server
It involves things in your real life, physical world
You can search and filter things in the app

I’ll update this post as more is “leaked”.

And here are guesses people have made:

RSS Reader
Flower purchasing app
Super Mario Bros.
ICQ client
Photo (Instagram-esque) app
Recipe app
A Game
SMS Client
Dating App
People of Wal-Mart
Wedding-related
Sharing things You Like over Social Networks (Not right or wrong, since one hint was basically this)
New Orleans-related app
Fart app
Birthday/anniversary reminder app
Greeting Card app
Calendar App
Image editor-style app that places friends’ faces on the photos
Life planner/organizer
incredible! 2
Social media app combined with Google Voice
“Siri” for TouchPad
app that maintains “seen notification” state across social networks
Yelp
Augmented Reality game

I’ll say this: whomever guesses correctly what the app does (before I announce it) will receive a promo-code for a free copy.

Important Info About Zhephree App Support Next Week

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:51:00 -0500

Hey, everyone! Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads-up about my availability soon.

Since I have four apps out in the Catalog, I figured I should let my users know that I will most likely not be available to respond to tweets or e-mails over the next week and a half since I’m getting married next weekend.

I will absolutely respond to support requests via Twitter or email once I return from my break.

Here’s where you can get support:

foursquare: if there is a problem with the foursquare service (i.e., not connecting, wrong points, improper mayorship, etc) you can contact foursquare’s support (as you should always be doing in these cases) on Twitter at @4sqSupport or on their support site: http://support.foursquare.com/home. If you have problems with the foursquare app, you can use the in-app contact form to send me a message and I’ll get to it as soon as I start handling e-mail again.

growlr: As with foursquare, if you have problems with the Untappd service, you can contact Untappd via twitter: @untappd or their support site: http://help.untappd.com/ And if you have a problem with the app, shoot me a tweet at @zhephree and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

neato!: Shoot me a tweet at @zhephree or @neato_webos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

incredible!: Shoot me a tweet @zhephree or @incrediblewebos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

Just wanted everyone to know so you won’t freak out if I don’t respond in my usual timely manner.

Enjoy a Zhephree-less week!

I (sorta) Fixed Google Reader

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:52:00 -0500

So, Google went and changed Reader. I don’t hate it, but a few things irked me. One, it didn’t make use of your full screen width for articles, the navigation bar was too wide, and the bar at the top was too fat.

My biggest complain though, was sharing. They took out native sharing and sharing is through Google+ only. This sucks, but I’ve worked around it. But the little +1 button under each post requires you to publicly +1 a post (it shows up on your “+1’s” tab on your Google+ profile), and then you get to share with a specific person or Circle. But, if you share the item with only 1 person on Google+, a link to the website is still publicly visible on your profile. So, it’s not 100% private.

Not only that, but once you accepted the new look, you lost everything your people you were following ever shared to you.

So, I wrote a little Chrome extension to fix a few of these issue.

Left Navigation is skinnier
Main content area is wider
Text of items now stretches to the edge of the screen
The toolbar at the top (Refresh, Mark as Read, etc) is thinner
“People You Follow” section is visible again, allowing you to see old shared items
Added a “Share” button on the active item. Clicking this activates the “Share…” dropdown from the black Google bar at the top of your screen. This allows you to share the item to Google+ (person or a Circle) without first publicly +1-ing it.
Brought back the Shift+S keyboard shortcut for sharing
Links within items are now blue instead of black, making them easier to see.

It’s not perfect, but it makes me feel a bit better. Also, I created a Circle on Google+ called “Reader”. I dragged it to the beginning of the Circles so that when I share an item via Reader, the “Reader” Circle is at the top of the list. This makes it a lot easier to share. I put the same people I shared with on Reader into that Circle.

Hopefully I can address all the problems at some point, mostly ones listed here: http://brianshih.com/78073742

I haven’t submitted the extension to the Chrome Store yet, but you can download it here.

Download fixedreader extension.

Edit: I should note that this works best when you’re in “collapsed view”. There are tiny issues with the “Share” button on the “expanded view” where it might show up 3 times on one post. Not a big deal, but yeah. I’ll fix that later.

Clarifying My tweets

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:20:08 -0500

Earlier today I went on a mini-Twitter rant about switching platforms from webOS and apparently some people didn’t quite follow my point, so, I’ll explain here.

Laying Down the Facts
I’ve been a webOS user and developer the same amount of time — since October 2009. During those two years, I’ve learned a lot about development, business, and the mobile industry. I’ve made a bunch of internet friends, and made some extra spending cash. webOS has been the best mobile OS I’ve used or tinkered with, and I’ve played with them all. webOS will always be the finest choice in mobile OSes, built by people with a true passion.

The Turmoil
We had Palm floundering and then HP picked them up and we felt cautiously better. Then, HP did a half-assed job at pushing webOS, and then killed off hardware production, mere days after the launch of the TouchPad. webOS software development has continued and 3.0.4 is the most solid build of webOS we’ve ever had. Now, HP is still deciding what to do with webOS, and rumors speculate that it’ll be killed off, and not sold off.

Switching
As a result of no new hardware coming out and a lot of people running half-working Sprint Pre-s and the Pre3 being extremely scarce, people are looking for new mobile OSes. Our cellphones are important aspects of our lives. For many of us, they’re the only way to contact us (no landlines), and for work, most of us need a constant e-mail connection. Texting and Twitter and Facebook are how many of us stay in touch with distant family or old friends who’ve grown up and started families elsewhere. Our phones are very important to us.

It’s Just a Phone
Yes, I have said it before, I said it again today, and I’ll continue to say it. At the end of the day, it’s just a phone. However, it is also a tool. Tools are personal things. Grab 10 construction workers on a jobsite and ask what brand power tools they use. Some might say Dewalt, some might say Stanley, some might say Ryobi. Some might say they use a Dewalt drill, but a Ryobi saw. They looked around, tried different ones and found that different tools work for different jobs. Different tools work for different people.

The same thing is true for phones. Grab 10 people on the street. Some use iOS, some use Android, some use BlackBerry, and other may use webOS or Windows Phone. If you ask them why, they’ll all have different reasons. Some might say they have an Android phone, but use an iPad. That’s because they’ve looked around, tried different things and found different devices work for different jobs. Different phones work for different people.

Loyalty
The webOS community is quite possibly the most impassioned community of any tech community. We’re a loyal bunch. Most of us have been here since the Sprint launch, many more have been Palm fans since the Centro. And it’s not just the users — the engineers behind webOS believe in their product and honestly care about it, like a parent for a child. The webOS Developer Relations team is equally loving and have put thousands of hours into making sure everyone got the apps they wanted by helping developers through every step and making sure they had access to devices. It used to cost money to be a webOS dev — then they made it 100% free. Ask an iOS developer how much it costs to be an iOS developer.

But from this loyalty of the community comes a lot of what I consider to be misguided passion.

I am not implying that being passionate about webOS is misguided. I am extremely passionate about webOS. I have been for a long time. I defend webOS every chance I get. I evangelize it to friends and people I meet. I get excited about seeing webOS devices in the wild.

But being passionate about a peace of technology is one thing. Being passionate to the point of being rude to others is a whole other thing. That’s what my tweets were about. A lot of people are switching platforms right now. Their webOS phones are falling apart and they’re under contract and finding inexpensive webOS hardware that isn’t a Pre or Pixi Plus is often difficult. Sometimes, you need a new phone and the only option is to pick from the menu of devices your carrier has. Unfortunately, that menu doesn’t have webOS devices (except a Pixi Plus on AT&T?).

I’ve seen a lot of webOS diehards tweet and post harsh statements about people that have left webOS for iOS or Android or Windows Phone. That is completely inappropriate. That way of thinking and acting is completely the opposite of everything that the webOS community stands for. Remember when people would mock webOS and we’d get offended? How is it okay to do the same to people that moved to another platform? It’s hypocritical and sad and immature.

Seeing people talk about sticking with webOS while others are leaving, like they’re somehow better people because of it, is scary to me. Who have you become? These same people are the ones that mocked iPhone “fanboys” and yet, they’re behaving the same way.

Clarification
When I said on Twitter that it doesn’t matter what mobile OS people use, I meant that, as a community, it should not matter to you. Derek Kessler said that it matters to him. As the Editor of a website devoted to covering webOS news and apps, this is obvious. The success of webOS directly affects Derek.

He also mentioned that it matters to the people working in the webOS GBU at HP. As the sole reasons webOS is what it is, they even more so directly benefit from the success of webOS. As I said earlier, these are some of the greatest people in the industry and they do not deserve to see webOS — a true labor of love — be cast away like yesterday’s jam. These are some of the best and the brightest people working in tech today and they deserve to carry out their project and see it grow to the amazing platform it should be. Of course webOS’s success matters to them.

Derek added that it should also matter to developers, like myself. As a developer that has made some money from apps, this is absolutely true. My apps, like webOS, are a labor of love. I built my apps because first and foremost, I wanted these apps. I spent time designing and developing them, spending thousands of hours in front of my laptop. My apps, and equally webOS, mean the world to me. I obviously benefit directly from the success of webOS.

But I’ve only made a little bit of cash over the years. Enough to subsidize the cost of running my webserver and buy a thing here and there, but nothing much to speak of, like the tens of thousands of dollars some of my fellow developers have reported making recently. If I develop my apps for multiple platforms, I’d probably stand to make a little extra than I do now, but not much more, since it’s a bigger pond with many more fish.

But for me, as a dev, money was always a bonus. Having thousands of people use and enjoy something I created was the part I enjoyed the most. I got into mobile development because I wanted an app, and that app is free today AND open source. Obviously, money wasn’t the issue here.

So when I said what mobile OS people use doesn’t matter, I meant it, but obviously it affects certain people. Just how if you don’t use iOS, it affects people at Apple and iOS developers. Yes, it would take a many, many more Davids to take down the Goliath that is Apple, but the principle remains the same.

The point of my Twitter rambling wasn’t to upset people about webOS. It was actually quite the opposite — I was trying to appeal to those that are acting downright childish about people leaving webOS and convince them that it’s not a big deal and that their energy is better served elsewhere.

The community collectively congratulated Richard Kerris and wished him luck via Twitter the other day. That is the true spirit of the webOS Community. Wishing luck to the man that was one of the bigger cheerleaders for webOS at HP (maybe if out of requirement of his job) as he moves over to a competitor to do the exact same job is The Right Thing. Kerris should remain a respected member of the webOS community, as should anyone that has held respect in the community.

Will I move to another OS? Probably for my daily phone, yeah. I’m getting curious about new OSes out there. My two years with webOS has been the longest I’ve stayed with any one OS. I’m itching to play with a new gadget. I’ll always be a webOS user though, as my TouchPad is more than just a developer device.

And as I said on Twitter — as long as there are people using webOS, I will be a webOS developer. If I buy a different phone, I will still update and maintain foursquare, neato!, and growlr. I will still update and maintain incredible! and my next app (yep, I’m almost finished my second TouchPad app), and my next app, and my next app…

I’m in the webOS community now, and I will be tomorrow. You can re-read that sentence every day and it will always be true.